LIBRA RY OF CONG RESS. 

Shelf ^."E-^.S- 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



INCENTIVES 



MENTAL CULTUllE 



TEACHERS. 



Doue ut discas. 

' I'liou tliereforc which teachest another, teachest thou not thyself .' 
EpisT. TO THE Romans, U. 21. 



BY / 

/ 

JAMES DAVIE BUTLER. 



rive thousand copies printed by order of the Institute, for gratuitous distribution. 



BOSTON: 
TICK NOR, REED, AND FIELDS 

MDCCCLIII. 



INCENTIVES 



MENTAL CULTURE 



TEACHERS. 



Doce ut discas. 

' Thou therefore which teachest another, teachest thou not thyself ? ' 

EpisT. TO THE Romans, II. 21. 



JAMES DAVIE BUTLER. 



BOSTON: 
TICKNOR, REED, AND FIELDS 

MDCCC Lll. 






PRINTED BT THURSTOK, TORRY, AND KMERSON. 



LECTURE. 



"While listening to the lecturers, who have so 
often, in these last days, fed lis with the various 
food of sweetly uttered knowledge, I have said to 
myself more than once, •' What shall the man do that 
Cometh after the king ? " * Nor can I doubt but that 
those who assigned to us speakers the order of our 
appearance, reverenced the oriental custom, according 
to which, " Every man at the beginning doth set 
forth good wine, and when men have well drunk, then 
that which is worse." Or perhaps as classical schol- 
ars, they may have imitated Prometheus, who began 
to make man of finer clay, as it were of porcelain, 
but lacking materials, was compelled to eke out his 
work with baser matter, at first intended for compos- 
ing creatures of a lower race. My own apology for 
trespassing at all on your attention, now you have 
been feasted to the full, is, that after many who 
were rich had cast in much money into the Jewish 
temple-treasury, then, and not before, there came 
a certain poor widow, and she threw in two mites, 
which make a farthing. Yet small as may be the 
value of the coin I contribute, its superscription, 
CULTURE, need not shrink from a comparison with 
the legend on guineas, napoleons, or double eagles. 

Culture is clearly one great end of our being. 
God, indeed, " hath made all nations of men that 

* This lecture was the last in the course before the Institute. 



4 MR. butler's lecture. 

they should seek the Lord." * How shall they seek 
him ? One answer to this question is, by doing 
good. But as the fountain must precede the stream, 
so he, who would do good, must first be good. And 
what is it to be good ? Is it not to use our faculties 
as just views of their nature show they were in- 
tended to be used ? Culture, then, moral, mental 
and physical, is one gi'eat purpose of our existence. 
I mention moral culture first, since it is not only our 
clearest duty, but is the best basis for all other cul- 
ture ; while physical culture alone would leave man 
a mere animal, and mental culture alone might only 
raise him to the bad eminence of the prince of Pan- 
demonium. Holding, as I do, the laws of hygiene in 
such esteem, as to think sickness more often a fault, 
than a calamity, and persuaded, as I am, that the dark- 
est day the land of the Puritan ever saw, was that, 
when the phrase New England Primer ceased to be 
synonymous with the Westminster Catechism, (since 
many of her children have been hence common- 
schooled out of earth as well as heaven,) I trust I 
shall not be thought neglectful either of the body or 
the soul, although in the present address, I say noth- 
ing more about them, but confine myself to the 
culture of the mind. 

My subject, then, is, some of the incentives, 

WHICH SHOULD URGE TEACHERS TO MENTAL ADVANCE- 
MENT. I seem to myself to follow a natural order of 
thought, by speaking first of those incentives, which 
appeal to teachers in common with other men, and 
afterwards, of such as address themselves peculiarly to 
teachers. 

The ends of all our actions, so far as they respect 
ourselves, are two, Culture and Condition. It is bet- 
ter to aim at culture, for many reasons. Thus it is 
more in our poaver to gain culture. Who can be 
sure of riches, when not one man in ten thousand, 

* Acts xvii 27. 



INCENTIVES TO MENTAL CULTURE. O 

even among calculating Yankees, ever became a 
millionaire ; or of office, seeing the worthiest, and the 
wiliest of statesmen, pronounced alike unavailable ; 
or of popularity, now that men change their opinions 
as often and as willingly as their linen ? External 
advancement is dependent on the favor of associates, 
or on accidents as unforeseen and surprising, as if 
there were no fixed laws of nature. Mental ad- 
vancement is at the mercy of no fraudulent partner, 
no fall of stocks, no wind or weather. It is not 
in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are thus, or 
thus. He that will, may learn to read, and then, may 
so read as to investigate, and may then, by reflection, 
classify his facts, and by observation, illustrate his 
principles. Thus laboring, he secures culture. Vives 
acquirit eundo. In confirmation of this doctrine, I 
need cite no other proof-text than the fact, that there 
are no circumstances in which men, of the most envi- 
able deportment, have not appeared, flashing out of 
thick darkness, as lightning out of the black cloud. If 
then, culture were of only equal value with condi- 
tion, it would yet be more worthy of our pursuit, 
because it is more within our reach. If the delight 
afforded us in every swamp and pasture, by a modi- 
cum of botanical knowledge, be no greater than is 
forced upon an ignoramus, in the gardens of Louis 
XIV"., it is still wiser to study botany, than to essay 
reaching the paradise of Versailles ; because, we are 
more sure to succeed in the inward, than in the out- 
ward pilgrimage. 

Again, mental advancement is more our own, than 
material. The one must be acquired, the other may 
be conferred. You take your father's outward estate 
according to law, but you would no more think 
of thus inheriting his inward wealth, than of as- 
suming his military titles. In addition to this, out- 
ward resources are as hard to keep, as to get, so that 
to the wisest of men, they seemed always ready to 
take the wings of the eagle ; but regarding internal 
1* 



6 MR. butler's lecture. 

resources, it has always been proverbial,* that they 
cannot be lost, that they bear transportation, re- 
main in solitude, aye, when friends fall off; that 
they are not like porcelain and upholstery, at the 
mercy of moth and riist, or of fire and careless ser- 
vants; that they solace sickness, infirmity and age. 

Moreover, all men should labor for intellectual 
improvement, that they may thus become better 
fitted for their respective stations. To do aught well, 
still craves a kind of wit. Everywhere wisdom is 
profitable to direct, and labor that is educated, is 
more eligible, than that ^vhich is ignorant. Other- 
wise, veterans would not be superior to raw recruits, 
and master-workmen, to the youngest apprentices. 
But he, whose accomplishments are such, that he 
seems to bestow more honor on his station than he 
takes from it, promotes his own advancement. A 
good thing is soon snatched up. Men may say to 
him, go up higher, in his own calling; as David, 
having bravely fought a bear, was bidden to fight 
the Philistine giant ; or, as one of our contemporaries, 
who began his literary course by teaching a district 
school for six w^inters, has been promoted, step by 
step, till he is now the President of the oldest, richest, 
and most influential University on this continent. 
Or the man of culture may be called, out of his own 
walk of life, into a wider field ; as Franklin was 
called from his printing-press to stand before kings, 
and as John Stuart, the schoolmaster of king George 
the Third, was exalted as prime minister of the 
British empire. It is not, however, often that merit 
thus makes its way. Our President-making cau- 
cuses have, indeed, delighted to honor one man, whom 
no name but accidency befits, another because he 
was unknown, and a third because he knew nothing 

* Nam ccetera neque temporum sunt ncque setatum omnium neque 
locorum ; hasc studia adolesceiitiara alunt, senectutem oblectanl, 
secundas res ornant, adversi.s perfugium ac solatium prcebent, 
delectant domi, nee impediunt foris, pernoctant nobiscum, pere 
grinantur, rusticantur. — Cic.pro Archia, vii. 



INCENTIVES TO MENTAL CULTURE. 7 

of statesmanship. But what though ciphers, whom 
no position can make significant figures, hold offices 
they cannot fill, yet theirs is but the shadow of 
power; the substance belongs to men of mind behind 
the scenes, who mould the opinions and write the 
speeches of many a popular pageant, that neither 
speaks his own words, nor thinks his own thoughts. 

"A thing of strings and wires b)- others played." 

Gibbon somewhere remarks, that almost all hered- 
itary despots grow up so sensual and effeminate, 
as to be, in reality, the slaves of their own house- 
hold slaves. This remark is only a generalization 
of the strong-minded Grecian philosopher's threat, 
when he was exposed for sale in the slave-market, 
that whoever bought him, would buy more than he 
bargained for, — not a slave, but a master. 

Sometimes, also, power is accorded in form, as 
well as in fact, to those best able to sway its sceptre. 
I have seen a man, whose life had been spent in a 
shop or store, on a parade-day, dressed in the uni- 
form of a military officer, with golden epaulets, and 
riding with great pomp. But when he neared the 
armed men, the thunder of the captains and the 
shouting, his Avar-horse, whose neck was clothed with 
thunder, and the glory of whose nostrils was terrible, 
as if smelling the battle afar oft, pawed in the valley 
and swallowed the ground Avith fierceness and rage, 
till his affrighted and endangered rider resigned the 
stormy saddle to his horse-taming and more capable 
groom. Thus, in emergencies, the helm is given to 
the true pilot, and the Bucephalus of responsible 
station to him, who can guide that steed by skilfnlness 
of hand. How many of Napoleon's marshals rose 
from the ranks! 

It behooves every man to cultivate his mind, 
because he can in no otlier way commune with the 
sons of genius. This idea is a favorite with Schiller. 
For illustrations see his poems and ballads. Thus at 



8 MR. butler's lecture. 

page 296, of Bulwer's translation, we read of the 
Antique at Paris : 

" By him alone the muses are possessed, 
Who warms them from the marble at his breast ; 
Bright to the Greek, from stone each goddess grew — 
Vandals, each goddess is but stone to you ! " 

Again, on page 315, the Italian Antique thus 
addresses a tourist from the North : 

"And o'er the river hast thou passed, and o'er the mighty sea, 
Atui o'er the Alps, the dizzy bridge hath borne thy steps to me ; 
To look all near upon the bloom my deathless beauty knows, 
And, face to face, to front the pomp whose fame through ages goes — 
Gaze on, and touch my relics now! At last thou standest here, 
But art thou nearer now to me, or i to thee more near? " 

You may stand by their sides, give them dinners, 
print their books in gold, fill your houses with their 
fairy creations, rear them statues or mausoleums, 
garner up their autographs and relics, yet, without 
congenial culture, you are no nearer them, than if 
divided from them in space, by oceans, and conti- 
nents, and in time, by millenniums ; you are infinitely 
further from them, than you might be even if thus 
divided. Your sympathies may be as imperfect with 
them, as were those of Ulysses, the earth-born, with 
Calypso, the celestial, when, as they sat at table, he 
ate beef and bread, while her food was ambrosia and 
nectar.* 

■ Who is the oirner of the statue, that enchants the 
world, and of all the Florentine galleries ? Is it the 
thick-lipped, unappreciating Austrian duke, whose 
millions have bought, and whose bayonets guard 
them ? Give me rather that ownership of them, 
which belongs to those artists who seek them as 
Meccas of the mind ; to the Danish sculptor, who 
measures kingdoms with his feeble footsteps, that he 
may behold them ; and to the American painter, who 
works his passage over the mighty deep, to reach 
such shrines. That sculptor and painter have all 

* Odyssey, v. 199. 



INCENTIVES TO MENTAL CULTURE. 9 

that is to be desired in these gems, and therefore may 
well be content to let the Austrian, or those that will, 
keep them, and be anxious about them. 

" Doth the harmony 
That slumbers in the sweet lutfe-strings, belong, 
To the purchaser, who dull of ear doth keep 
The instrument ? True, he hath bought the right 
To strike it into fragments, yet no art 
To wake it into silvery tones, and melt 
With bliss of thrilling song." 

Genuine excellence in all departments, must say to 
every one who has nothing akin to it, either in spirit, 
or at least in taste, (in the words of the rose, to that 
brute which the Jews counted the most unclean of 
all animals,) Sus apag-e ! hand tibi spiro. 

" Insensate swine, depart from me, 
No fragrance I exhale for thee." 

Furthermore, mental delights should commend 
themselves to every man as nobler than those of 
sense. The former we share with angels, the latter 
with brutes that graze the field or roam the wood. 
Who would live for epicurism, knowing that the 
most exquisite refinements of luxury, beds all of 
rose-leaves, snails fattened on strawberries, exagger- 
ated geese-livers, and Pates de foies g-ras, * become 
as tasteless to him that is used to them, as the plain- 
est fare? Satisfied that the glutton's wish, to have a 
throat a mile long and every inch a palate, is not 
fulfilled to any man in our days, yes, that no man 
can eat two good dinners daily, who would prefer the 
evanescent delicacies of the table to 

" a perpetual feast 

Of nectared sweets where no crude surfeit reigns." 

In addition to these superiorities of culture, it has 

* " The Strasbourg goose is fixed near a great fire, with its feet nailed 
upon a plank, crammed with food, and deprived of drink j yet when 
he reflects that his liver, bigger than himself, will diffuse ail over 
Europe the glory of his name, he resigns himself to his destiny and 
suffers not a tear to flow." 



10 MR. butler's lecture. 

claims on every man, inasmuch as it tends to estab- 
lish a better aristocracy than the world has hitherto 
seen. There are still many aristocracies, or assump- 
tions of superiority on false pretences, which yet 
need to be rebuked. One of these is ancestral pride, 
as if it were more credit to me to have had a great- 
grandfather, who did some great thing, than to have 
done that great thing myself; or as if, as we read in 
Blackstone,* " Delicacy of sentiment were peculiar 
to those of noble birth." What a lack of genuine cul- 
ture in Ireland, is argued by the fact, that Robert Boyle 
is there counted worthy of less abundant honor, be- 
cause he was the father of experimental science, than 
because he was the son of the Earl of Cork ! 

Another sham aristocracy is that of titles^ vox et 
prceterea nihil. 

" Words of learned length and thundering sound." 

Daniel Webster, when required to WTite a letter 
from the President of our Union, ten years ago, to 
the Emperor of China, thus began, " I John Tyler, 
President of the United States of America, which 
States are, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Mas- 
sachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, 
New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland, 
Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, 
Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Kentucky, Tennes- 
see, Missouri, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Michi- 
gan," &c. f In writing to a puerile potentate, it was 
doubtless wise to fetch about this form of speech. 
Yet how far is our intellectual monarch from such 
littleness, w^hen he writes for himself, and to kindred, 
if not commensurate minds. In proportion as the 
substance of mental discipline increases, shall we 
cease to care for such semblance of it, as are afforded 
by a string of abbreviations following one's name, like 
the queue of braided hair, dangling down to the heels 

* Book i. p. 11. t Works, vol. vi. p. 477. 



INCENTIVES TO MENTAL CULTURE. 



11 



of a Chinaman, and puzzling everybody but school- 
boys, fresh from their spelling-books. A correction 
is still needed for this puerility, though it has in a 
degree proved its own antidote ; since universities 
have given titles to such as deserved them least, as 
if literally following the advice which Diogenes gave 
the Athenians, namely, that they should vote their 
asses, horses ; and since many names of honor have 
become vulgarized, through being bestowed on the 
basest of men or beasts, as the high Roman name 
Patrican has degenerated into the Irish nickname, 
Paddy, * and the conquered Sleswickers have made 
the dignified ephithets of High Mightinesses, by 
which they are forced to address their Danish con- 
querors, ridiculous, by lavishing the same sounding 
nothings on the dogs in their streets. 

Again, the aristocratic airs of some politicians, on 
the score of their being dressed in a little brief author- 
ity, would evaporate in a community tinged with lib- 
eral studies. Shall we vote into majesty the mantle of 
him, who owes his elevation to an availability, no 
whit more creditable to him than hereditary succes- 
sion, or the accident of a lot, — who is a mouth-piece 
of any sentiments a majority may dictate, and who 
may be no more suited for his place than Caligula's 
horse was for the Roman consulship ? 

Mental advancement is demanded, to abate the 
pride of dress, fashion and ivealth; for this aristocracy 
of the purse and vain show is our besetting sin. 
The sexton in one of our metropolitan churches is 
reported, (slanderously let us hope,) to ask all stran- 
gers who seek an occasional sitting in his church, 
whether they came thither in their own carriages ; and 
to give only standing places to such, as came in hired 
vehicles, while he sends away altogether such, as are 
not too proud to tread the earth, as well as to till it. 
If more matrons were anxious for jewels in their 

* Gibbon, xxxvi. note 126. 



12 MR. butler's lectukk. 

heads, rather than on them, there would be fewer of 
the young misses, or those anxious to be thovight 
young, who retire to solitude only to decorate 
themselves ; whose toils are confined to their toilet 
amid the bravery of tinkling ornaments, cauls, round 
tires like the moon, mufflers, wimples, crisping-pins, 
and changeable suits of apparel ; and who are so 
hard to be drawn from this secret devotion, as to be 
tardy at every appointment. Were there more, both 
men and women, manifestly prizing inward adorning 
higher than outward, we might hope soon to see the 
last of dressy aristocrats; those ambulatory clothes- 
frames, whose chief end is to tie a cravat deftly ; 
to wear such clothes as provoke us to say, Ho^v much 
better worth looking at are the things worn than the 
wearers ; whose travels are the travels of trunks, 
which they go about to pack, unpack, re-pack, and 
be anxious about ; whose whole lives are wasted in 
getting, — not always in paying for, — garments, in 
putting on garments, in talking about, ostentating, or 
asking pardon for garments ; and at whose death, 
the only mourning, among men of like sense with 
themselves, will be, that they left so fine a wardrobe 
unworn. We shall have fewer youth, who, at their 
best estate, are altogether vanity, so soon as we 
have more men of full age, who, beholding the 
pomps and glories of material civilization, will sin- 
cerely say with Socrates, " How many things there 
are, which we do not want!" Had Dickens been 
more enamored of Socratic simplicity, he would 
never have written in his American Notes,* " Not 
being able, in the absence of any change of clothes, 
to go to church, I was reluctantly obliged to forego 
the delight of hearing Dr. Channing." 

But we need more of liberal study, chiefly as the 
antagonist of a mo7ie7/ed aristocracy. Mammon is 
here prone to be adored with exclusive idolatry be- 

• Page 13. 



INCENTIVES TO MENTAL CULTURE. 



13 



cause we know no hereditary rank, and few great 
prizes in army, navy or church, as well as because 
we pretend to esteem titles, office and luxury more 
lightly than other men. But had we ten cities, 
which, like Leyden in Holland, would choose to 
have a university founded in them, rather than to 
enjoy a perpetual exemption from taxation, there 
would soon be an end of such taunts, as, that Ameri- 
cans never utter a sentence, which has not the "word 
dollar in it, never see Niagara without calculating 
how many spindles it would turn, never meet a king 
without wishing to ask him the cost of his throne, 
never account any man a man of worth who is 
not worth something on 'change, and that without 
aid of clairvoyance!', our first and last thought may 
be known to be, how we can buy cheap and sell 
dear. 

O for mental improvement so decisive and ex- 
tended, as to clarify these corrupted currents of 
opinion, according to which, 

" Not a man, for being simply man, 
Hath any honor ; but honor for those honors 
That are without him ; as place, riches, favor, 
Prizes of accident as oft as merit." * 

Besides such general considerations as we have 
seen to call all men to culture, certain others of pecu- 
liar application to teachers, deserve our earnest heed. 
The claim of culture on teachers on account of 
their being set under authority, and hence responsible 
for what they teach, is too hackneyed to bear being 
dwelt upon, and yet deserves a momentary notice. 
I wish this were a time to illustrate how indissolu- 
bly the destinies of masters and scholars are bound 
together, so that whatever woe, through the short- 
comings of the master, falls upon the scholar, will 
rebound on his head from whom it came. 

" Troilus and Cressida, iii. 3. 



14 MR. butler's lecture. 

One of the English kings provided for his little 
son, a playmate, called a iohipping--bo7/, * who was to 
play with the prince, help him in learning his lessons, 
and, if possible, persuade him to apply himself; but, 
who, when the royal scion failed in a recitation, was, 
evening by evening, vicariously flogged in his stead, 
and in his presence. What this whipping-boy was 
to the king's son, that are teachers to their pupils. 
If the members fail to learn, the head suffers with 
them, and as it were for their fault. 

" Quid quid ie\ira.nt pueri plecluntur doctores." f 

Again, teachers may well feel incentives to intel- 
lectual advancement, inasmuch as their daily duties 
may be promotive of such advancement. What is it 
to teach ? It is to shine on the angles of a thought, 
till things which differ are distinguished, — to dignify 
the trivial, as rivers dignify their spring-heads, — to 
elucidate the obscure, like geometrical diagrams, — to 
simplify the difficult, as when a pair of compasses 
enable a child to draw a circle, — to freshen com- 
monplaces, as when old coin is new-minted, — to 
beautify the repulsive, as parables embroider the 
gospels, — and thus to fasten truth in each pupil's 
mind in as sure a place, as men fasten, what they 
hear said in praise of themselves, or in dispraise of 
their neighbors. Thus to teach is a 2vork, and, like 
other work, is the mother of vigor. " To work," cries 
Carlyle, " what incalculable sources of cultivation lie 
in that process, in that attempt ! How it lays hold 
on the whole man : not of a small, theoretical, calcu- 
lating fraction of him, but of the whole, practical, 
daring, doing, enduring man, thereby to awaken 
dormant energies, root out old errors at every step. 
He that has done nothing, has known nothing." 

Yet few occupations are so good a mental disci- 
pline as teaching, for few are so suited to detect a 
man's deficiencies in respect to exactness, informa- 

* Fortunes of Nigel, i. 101. f Horace, Epist. i. 14. 



INCENTIVES TO MENTAL CULTURE. 15 

tion, attention, readiness and expression, as well as 
to make them stare him in the face. When you 
thus become conscious of one error, can you fail to 
suspect yourself of more, and to give all dilijs^ence 
lest you be a blind leader of the blind ? When, 
through lack of investigation, you have drawn on 
fancy for a fact, will you not be ashamed still to 
have any need of thus mapjnng out a terra incognita, 
after the fashion of the old geographers, when they 
depicted central Africa? Surprised that your thoughts 
are more vagabond than any truant school-boy, do 
you feel no stimulus to that patient retiection, which 
^^TOught Newton's miracles ? Are you ahvays ready 
to answer a question, till you are asked, — and docs 
knowledge then, like sleep, refuse to come at your 
call? Surely, you will cultivate that philosophical 
association, which will, by any link, draw you a whole 
chain ; or you will so keep a commonplace book, 
that it shall be, to all you read, hear, or think, what a, 
concordance is to the Bible. When you begin to 
speak, docs your tongue falter, and are your thoughts 
hedged up ? Then you will read through a dic- 
tionary to enrich your vocabulary, glean acceptable 
words from every book, exhaust the real world, 
and imagine an ideal world, for fresh and fitting 
images, to simplify, dignify, or adorn your ideas. 
Are your utterances such, that every something being 
blent together, turns to a wild of nothing ? Then 
are you urged to seek, more than for silver, that lucid 
order, which turns a labyrinth into a plain path ; 
that arrangement which will integrate the multi- 
tudinous fractions, you have learned, into one sys- 
tem even as cunning artificers taught the cedars of 
Lebanon, the stones of Tabor, and the gold of 
Ophir, — parts into parts reciprocally shot, — to har- 
monize, in perfecting the holy and beautiful house, 
on mount Zion. 

Endeavors to make known, what he knows, not 
only thus stimulate the teacher to make up his 



16 



MR. BUTLER'S LECTURE. 



deficiencies in exactness, information, attention, 
readiness and expression, by causing these broken 
links in the golden chain of his culture to haunt 
him like ghosts, but they confer a blessing directly, 
even while they are being made. As they are to 
reflect the teacher's mind, they bring it to its bpst 
posture, as for a like reason, a mirror or painter 
brings the face of a fair lady ; they stamp whatever 
he imparts, more deeply in his own memory, as rivers 
still wear their channels deeper. " Children," said Dr. 
Johnson, " should always be encouraged to tell to 
some brother, sister, or servant, what they hear, — 
and that immediately, before the impression is erased 
by the intervention of new occurrences." They clarify 
his knowledge, since, 

" Thoughts disentangle passing o'er the lips, 
Speech spreads those beauteous images abroad 
Which else lie furled and clouded in the soul ; 
Aye, speech, is morning to the mind." 

Old familiar truths may become new to a teacher, 
because they are new to his pupils. Their new-born 
delight as knowledge dawns upon them, should, reju- 
venate his superannuated emotions, as with morning 
freshness. Moreover, through the answers or ques- 
tions of learners, new ideas, or hitherto undetected 
lations of old ideas, flash upon the teacher's mind. 

That the tendency of every instructor's daily path, 
is thus to be fruitful in suggestions, to quicken 
thought, to give alacrity to feeling, to reveal his weak- 
nesses to himself, and rouse him to correct them, every 
schoolmaster, every mistress of an infant school, and 
every inother, who has taught an abecedarian at her 
knee, knows by experience. I am as far as any one, 
from asserting that this tendency has free course and 
becomes effect in a majority of teachers, for of not a 
few must we admit that, — 

"As those fowls which live in water 
Are never wet, they do but smatter."* 

* Hudibras, Part 11. Canto 3, line 219. 



INCENTIVES TO MENTAL CULTURE. 17 

But the very cxistenco of such a tendency, is an 
incentive to intellectual pros^ress. Did this tendency 
oftener have its perfect work, more of our teachers 
would be found worthy to be classed with the first of 
recent French grammarians,* who, though a broker, 
was led to analyze grammatical princi))les, by edu- 
cating, in his leisure hours, his own daughters ; or with 
that Cicero of our senate, for whom we still pine 
with vain laraentings, who testified that the secret of 
his copious eloquence, was his daily habit of making 
known what he knew, — if not to men, women, and 
children, at least to horses and oxen, or even stumps 
and cornstalks ; or with Luther, whose words are, 
" I am one of those, who have made progress by 
instructing others." The practice of teaching being 
thus favorable to advancement, alas for those, who 
use this price to get wisdom, as abusing it! They 
would resemble the oriental star-gazers, if those wise 
men of the east, having been shown, even by their 
own daily calling, a star of hope and promise, had 
refused to yield themselves to its guidance. 

A teacher's life facilitates his culture, not only 
from the nature of his daily duties, but throug-h its 
blending of occupation and leisure. 

His circumstances are more to be desired, than 
though he had nothing else to do than to grow^ in 
knowledge. Who is ignorant, that those, who have 
nothing to do, as a bounden duty, become do-nothings? 
Books are made by such as must write before break- 
fast, or after bed-time, on board steamers and rail- 
cars, by those, who make more of their gleanings, than 
other men make of their vintage, — as Cicero turned 
his tempora subseciva f to more account, than others, 
their solid days. The reason is, that a daily task is 

* Girault. Encyc. Am. Supplementary volume. 

t Quantum ceteris ad festos dies ludorum celebrandos, quantum 
ad alias voluptates, et ad ipsam requiem animi et corporis concedi- 
tur temporum. — Cic. pro ArchUe, vi. 
-2* 



18 MR. butler's lecture. 

needed for inuring to habits of industry and exertion. 
Such habits more than compensate for the hours, which 
educational duties must subtract from a teacher's 
studious contemplations. They tend to keep him 
from idleness Avhen school is over, even as the mo- 
mentum a railroad car acquires will still propel it 
along the track, after it has been unshackled from 
the locomotive, or even directed to a divergent 
course. When, therefore, a teacher imagines, to him- 
self, the wonders he would achieve, but for his six 
hours of daily toil, let him be sure, that he has mistaken 
a help, for a hindrance, — like the paper kite, which 
would break its fettering string, or like the ship, which 
would throw overboard its encumbering ballast. 

Not only is the teacher thus invigorated by his 
labors, as are other men, but his leisure is surer and 
better, than that of most others. It is surer, because 
his work is not like the mechanic's, from sun to sun, 
— inuch less is it never finished, like the tasks of 
physicians, lawyers, and ministers. It is better, be- 
cause it not only regularly recurs, and is not liable to 
be disturbed, but it finds him at the very door of 
science. He is, perforce, more at home in the ele- 
ments of all knowledge, than other men are. But 
these elements, or the questions of pupils concerning 
them, prompt to further researches. They lead him, 
in the school-room, to reference-books, whenever the 
desiderated information is either too fragmentary to 
satisfy curiosity, or too extended to be mastered on 
the spot. Hence these elements, which some term 
beggarly — so few that a child may write them — are 
keys to doors great and effectual, narrow passages 
to broad saloons, staircases to swelling domes and 
airy pinnacles, or clues through the most labyrinthine 
mines of knowledge. Who will let these keys rust 
unused, throw away these clues, and refuse to enter 
the goodly land, which he day by day is led up to 
the top of Pisgah to behold ? He has laid a fair and 
firm foundation, — will he be content to build thereon 
with hav and stubble ? 



INCENTIVES TO MENTAL CULTUUE. 19 

Centuries ago a Russian czar inscribed on a guide- 
board at the southern gate of Moscow these words, 
" The road to Constantinople." That inscription 
has ever since turned the thoughts of a nation, 
towards the proud city whose name it bears. Let 
teachers but survey every principle, they make known 
to their scholars, as it were a finger-post, marking the 
road to desiderata beyond the horizon of their present 
knowledge, as mosques and minarets not yet seen ; 
let them but look upon their daily routine of duty, 
as gymnastics to nerve them with energy, and their 
daily leisure, as affording them opportunity for intel- 
lectual conquests, and their march will be as cease- 
less, as the Muscovites towards the city of the Saltan, 
and their eyes shall feast on beauties, of which Bos- 
phorus and all its harems cannot boast. If their flesh 
be not too weak, their spirits will be Avilling to adopt 
into their creed the German maxim, that one end of 
vacations is, that scholars may review old studies, but 
that their chief end is, to give teachers time to break 
ground in new studies — studio fall ente laborem. 

If the teacher's vocation, his act of teaching, the 
branches he teaches, his confinement and freedom, 
tend together toward his intellectual good, we may 
well expect to see fruits of such a tendency as, since 
our school system has been so long in operation, are 
already manfest. Such fruits I think we witness, in 
the gradual but ceaseless amelioration of our primary 
schools, and yet more palpably in the Yankee character. 

Where will you find a more plausible origin for the 
Yankee character — that glory, jest and riddle of the 
world — than in the school-house ? That character 
was not knowm, before the district school came into 
being. It now prevails in its intensest form, only 
where such schools have longest flourished. That 
make of mind, counting action the best rest, keen 
as a razor, guessing as accurately as other men calcu- 
late, versatile, so as like a cat always to light on the 
feet, self-reliant as a ship of war, inventing more 
than others imagine, reducing to practice what others 



20 MR. butler's lecture. 

demonstrate to be impracticable, bringing more to pass 
with a dull axe and a whittling jack-knife, than others 
with a chest of tools and a swashing broadsword, if 
not the highest style of man, is yet a higher style, 
than has ever been built out of so large a proportion 
of any community, as of Yankeedom, and is such a 
style of culture, as I have labored to show that a 
teacher's functions and position are suited to fur- 
nish forth. If we find an approach to this character 
among the canny Scotch, — who are said to be Yankees 
in great coats, as Yankees are said to be Scotchmen 
with their coats off, — we also find in their country 
an approach to our district schools. If, as Dr, Lyell 
observes, " Our school system is the most original pro- 
duct of the American mind," it cannot seem incredi- 
ble, that the product should thus react on its producer, 
heightening its nationality, and developing the seeds, 
our fathers brought from beyond the sea, into the Yan- 
kee variety of the Anglo Saxon. Nor let it be thought 
that the Yankee cuteness is more than co-extensive 
with the ground I assign for it, namely, school-keep- 
ing. For who of us never taught a common school ? 
Think you I would dare address you, teachers, had I 
never like you taught " the young idea how to ^re." 
Who is a native-born Yankee, and yet can remem- 
ber where he began in the nursery, among his earliest 
infantile sports, to play school ? The occupation of 
our earliest schoolmaster, — the Apostle Eliot, — on 
his death-day, at the age of eighty, was to teadh the 
alphabet to a child. On the whole, since the Yankee 
nation from first to last have figured as schoolmasters, 
I am persuaded that we ought to ascribe our Yankee 
nationality to our school-houses, as the rock whence 
it was hewn. 

A teacher may find an incentive to make the most 
of himself inteMectually in the present position and 
claims of his calling. 

How far is the corps of educators now, from that 
in the old Roman empire, when common schools were 



INCENTIVES TO MENTAL CULTURE. 21 

unthought of, or contemned,* when private tutors, as 
well as physicians, were slaves, f and when Tacitus 
could find no stronger phrase to mark the obscurity 
of a certain informer, than saying that he had once 
taught a school. ^ What a remove are we from tliose 
dark ages, in which writing was styled the clerical 
art, — ars clericalis ; ^ as if chirography had been in- 
vented solely for the benefit of the clergy. 

Our teachers have a better lot than the Scotch had, 
when Chalmers || was not counted worthy to eat with 
the children of the family in which he taught ; or 
than the English have, if we may infer any thing 
from the solicitude most British biographers of Mil- 
ton betray, to prove that that peerless poet could not 
have been guilty of keeping a school.** I need not say 
that all our teachers are in a paradise, compared with 
the English governesses, who are outcasts from the 
ranks of both servants and masters, and run a gaunt- 
let between them, buffetted by both ; as the unhap- 
py flying fish, an outcast from the heaven above and 
the ocean beneath, is the prey of dolphins in the 
water, or, if escaping their jaws, by darting into the 
air, becomes the victim of cormorants. How far is 
the teacher's post in America, better than in Austria, 
where it is required, so to vaccinate children with 
knowledge, that they will never take much of it ; or 
in those Italian despotisms, where, when a forgery 

* An tua demens 
Vilibus in ludis dictari carmina rnalis ? 
Non ego. Horace, Sat. i. 10, 75. 

Alas for Horace ? Little did he dream in what " vile schools '' his 
poems would be thumbed and dog-eared. 

I Gibbon, vol. i. page 26. | Annal. iii. 66. 

§ Encyc. Am. xi. 250. |1 Living Age, No. 320, p. 29L 

** " All his biographers are unwilling that Milton should be de- 
graded to a schoolmaster ; but since it cannot be denied that he 
taught boys, one finds out that he taught for nothing, and another 
that his only motive was zeal for the propagation of learning and vir- 
tue," &c. &c.— Johnson. 



22 MR. butler's lecture. 

occurs, the priest says to the peasant, " All this comes 
of learning to write ; I pray you avoid that black 
art." 

But while the American teacher blesses himself that 
he lives in the nineteenth, and not in any former cen- 
tury, and here, not elsewhere, let him remmeber 
that his vocation, just because it now opens to him 
new joys and hopes, lays upon him new cares and 
burdens. The name grammar school, (which once sig- 
nified an academy,) indicates that grammar was once 
deemed too high a branch for the children of the 
masses to meddle with ; the town records of the last 
century show that it seems to have then been no dis- 
grace for a public officer to spell more words wrong 
than right ; and the school in the town where I reside, 
when Dr. Bowditch attended it, about seventy years 
ago, had in it but one book, and that a dictionary, out 
of which the pupils were daily taught to spell in cho- 
rus, never failing to close with the longest word in the 
vocabulary, namely, that endecazyllabic tongue-trier, 
Honorijicabilitudmity* No teacher is in danger of 
thinking, that those who bore the torch of learning in 
the days of such ignorance, had the motives to self- 
improvement which he has, but many teachers may 
be in danger of not seeing, how much they must still 
teach to themselves, that they may liquidate the debt 
due their calling. I am far indeed from supposing, 
that the master will not keep in advance of his 
scholars, however many new^ studies may be thrust, 
as by hydrostatic pressure, into the course of his 
pupils. I have more fears, that his curriculum will 
become to him commonplace, so that he will put his 
students through their studies, somewhat as transpor- 
tation companies put through emigrants on the canal, 
and will himself beat and beat the beaten track, as 
listlessly as a hungry man would chew water, or go 
through all the manipulations of a Barmecides' feast, 

* Encyc. Amer. Supplementary volume. Article, Bowditch, 



INCENTIVES TO MENTAL CULTURE. 23 

while all the knives and forks, plates and platters, 
were foodless and empty. Accordingly he must 
contemplate the simple things he teaches, from new 
stand-points, or in their higher relations. Nothing 
short of thus seeking the fountain-head and root, can 
impart perpetual verdure and bloom to those flowers 
of knowledge, which are all that his disciples can as 
yet appreciate. 

In addition to quickening his own interest in his 
occupation, a teacher must study, that he may have 
a treasure in reserve, from which he can bring forth 
things new and old. If he has no such treasure, 
can he answer without evasion or delay, the ques- 
tions of an inquisitive class ? Needs he not to know 
much, not in class-books, that he may be able to sup- 
ply their deficiencies, or heighten their adaptation 
to special cases and individual minds ? If, as soon 
as some roguish urchin artfully throws him off the 
track, his train sticks fast as in the sand, will not all 
children, who know their right hand from their left, 
feel that his is a mechanical and not a resourceful 
mind ? Children are not such fools, as we think 
them. They can judge of what they cannot execute, 
as they can tell whether a shoe pinches, and where it 
pinches, though they cannot make a shoe. They judge 
what fills the vase, by the drops which run over; 
they understand, though, perhaps, they have never 
heard them, such maxims as — " Wanting in the least, 
wanting in much," Falsum in uno, Falsmn in omnibus. 

If these remarks would have had any justness, when 
scholars v^^exe seated on benches, that would seem to 
have been devised for inquisitorial torture, and when 
they breathed a worse atmosphere, than had been 
known out of old wells, since the prophet Jonah was 
schooled, for three days and nights, in a pestilent 
congregation of fishy fumes, how much more pene- 
trating may we expect to find the children of this 
generation, in school-houses, where the architecture, 
ventilation, finishing, furnishing, and whole material 
would do no discredit to a king's palace ? 



24 MR. butler's lecture. 

Yet what if a teacher's errors elude being detected 
by his school? Such a result cannot be so well for 
him, as ill for them. His fault escapes exposure, 
because it is mistaken for an excellence, and will 
surely be copied, more than all his excellences, as 
being easier to copy. Thus, like an ill-going town- 
clock, he may mislead a whole village. 

On the other hand, a teacher of genuine culture, 
totus teres atque rotundus. — f actus ad vngnem, will, 
by no'means, be, in his school, as a flower blushing 
"unseen in the desert, or a, gem in an unfathomed 
ocean-cave. His industry, enthusiasm, and still-bafiled, 
but still-renewed endeavor, will waken responsive 
echoes in his pupils, though his circle be broader 
than theirs. Contagious virtue will go out of him. 

Then he will be ever before them, as a cluster 
of Eshcol, — ripe, purple, gushing, — alluring them 
towards the land of learning, whence it came. Here 
was the secret of Arnold's success. He made scholars 
because he was a scholar. His tones, gestures, words, 
pronunciation, casual sayings, and classic taste, in- 
sensibly permeated and leavened the whole lump. 
Hence has his praise as a model-teacher, been with 
good reason hymned in your hearing, by a loftier 
harp than mine.* The truth is, that whatever is set 
on a high place flows downward ; as Pliny's doves 
in the Roman Capitol have been the pattern for 
numberless modern mosaics ; as the East Room at 
Washington, affords a model for parlors from Maine 
to Oregon ; and as Shakspeare's diction enriches the 
speech of legions, who never read one line of his 
writings. This re-action of a teacher's scholarship 
upon his scholars, must indeed be, to a great ex- 
tent, indirect, and through eyes which catch in 
an instant, what the ear cannot learn in an hour. 
But without forgetting that the minds of children 

* The allusion is to a previous lecture in the course, by Joshua 
Bates, Jr., Esq., Principal of the Brimmer School, Boston. 



INCENTIVES TO MENTAL CULTURE. 25 

are vials with narrow necks, the master, who is thor- 
oughly imbued with knowledge, will soon discover, 
that they are able to receive more than he, if less 
assiduous as a student, would have been able to 
impart ; while those he teaches, will feel that he is 
a tree, whose branches would not bend so lowlily 
within their reach, if less heavily laden with fruit. 

But if, in these times, a teacher cannot be too thor- 
oughly furnished for his duties in school, still less can 
he be, for what I may call, his out-door duties. I say 
nothing of the calls that will be made on him, to 
solve the questions — often of impossible solution — 
which arise in his precinct, or to judge of books 
for a library, or to aid in debates, or to lecture at 
literary lyceums, but I must not pass in silence 
certain other demands which lie more in the line of 
his duty. Who, but he, is to separate the precious, 
from the vile, — educational improvements, from mere 
innovations? Such is the philanthropy of our con- 
temporary compatriots, that more missionaries, than 
are scattered through the pagan world, may be found 
itinerating among our schools, each preaching his 
gospel, in the shape of a new school-book, or new 
ology, o^raphy, or osophij. The misfortune is, that 
each new missionary snatches away the bread, left 
our children by his predecessor, before they have time 
to taste a morsel of it ; so that, like Sancho Panza, 
for whom grave physicians interdicted this dish as 
too hearty, and that as too meagre, this as vege- 
table, and that as animal, one as too sweet, and 
another as too sour,* they are ready to starve in 
the midst of plenty. It devolves on teachers, more 
than on any other class of men, to try these minis- 
tering spirits, of what sort they are. Teachers must 
seek the golden mean, where antagonistic ultraists 
border on the truth. They must set their faces 
against the mystics^ that make books on the principle 

* Don Quixote, Part II. Chap. 47. 
3 



26 MR. butler's lecture. 

of the tailor, in Dean Swift's Lagado*, who measur- 
ed his customers by astronomical observations, and 
equally against the siwpUcity-mongers, who " blasting 
pupils with excess of light," are so bent on making 
all things easy, even to the lazy, that they commend 
the sluggard, who hearing that it was good for health 
to breathe the air of earth newly turned up by the 
plough, had his servant bring a fresh clod of it into 
his chamber every morning, and held his head over 
it, while he lay in his bed.f So is it theirs, to give a 
verdict on the much talked of claims of Phonetic 
science. They must tell us, whether it is only a eu- 
phemistic name for bad spelling, or whether it is a 
railroad, over what has always been " the great 
dismal swamp of childhood," or whether it is a 
iertium quid betw^een the two, partly both, but 
wholly neither. 

That instructors may thus be breakwaters, shel- 
tering every ship that brings a freight worth having, 
but beating back the billows of quackery and hum- 
bug, full of sound and fury, yet signifying nothing, 
they must be rooted and grounded in knowledge. 

Teachers now-a-days have a need of mental 
growth formerly unknown, that they may pay their 
debt to educational literature. Had every teacher 
made the most of his mind, I think we should have 
fewer school-books ; but our educational authors 
would have been more exclusively practical educators, 



* " This operator did his office after a different manner from those 
of his trade in Europe. He first toolf my altitude by a quadrant, 
and then with rule and compasses, described the dimensions and 
outlines of my whole body, all which he entered upon paper ; and in 
six days brought my clothes very ill-made, and quite out of shape, 
by happening to mistake a figure in the calculation. But my 
comfort was, that I observed such accidents very frequent, and little 
regarded."— Works, II. 153. 

I " It is best to take the air of earth new turned up. I knew a 
great man that lived long, who had a clean clod of earth brought to 
him every morning as he sat in his bed : and he would hold his head 
over it a pretty good while." — Bacon, Nat. History, Cent. x. ^ 928. 



INCENTIVES TO MENTAL CULTURE, 27 

and their books would have been so much better 
adapted to the needs of our pupils, that none could 
declare them, like the religion of Hudibras — 



-" intended 



" For nothing else but to be mended "* 

Were our teachers as studious as they might be, 
common-school periodicals would not drag out their 
existence like convicted felons with halters round 
their necks, and every month ready to be supended. 
They would become the most fresh and racy issu^e of 
our press, being reservoirs, to which sparkling springs, 
in every district, should yield, as living waters, its quota 
of original observation, experiment, or reflection. The 
appeal of books and papers, urging teachers to self- 
improvement, is seconded by this Institute, — our 
modern Olympic games — and others of a more local 
character. Such festivals are suited to be magnets, 
calling together from every quarter, and garnering up 
every fragment of educational suggestions ; and 
not only this, but they should act on teachers like 
the Patent-office on mechanics, rousing them to 
witty yet practical inventions, which, when concen- 
trated, as at this anniversary, shall not only gather 
crowds to behold them, but make outsiders, if they 
would teach you anything, appear as ridiculous as 
Phorraio, who never set a squadron in the field, ap- 
peared, when he lectured to Hannibal, the victor of 
a hundred battles, on the art of war and the duties 
of a general.f 

Teachers are called to self-culture, not only by edu- 
cational literature, but as a safeguard against certain 

* T. i. 205. 

t Quid enim aut arrogantius, aut loquacius fieri portuit, quam 
Hannibali, qui tot annos de imperio cum populo Romano omnium 
gentium victore certasset, Grtccum hominem, qui nunquam castra- 
vidisset, nunquam denique mininiam partem ullius publici muneris 
attigisset, pracepta de imperatoris otiicio et de re militari dare ? — Cic. 
de drat. ii. 18. 



28 MR. butler's lecture. 

dangers to which their calling exposes them. Of 
these peccant humors, I will mention but one, namely, 
self-conceit. Instructors, from their perpetual contact 
with inferiors, are prone to overrate themselves. If 
they turn not to arduous studies, they must resemble 
the men of Shinar, who, living where they saw no 
mountain, were credulous that their Babel would 
soon reach heaven. From the neglect of teachers to 
be ever learning, their name because synonymous with 
pedant; they were satirized on the stage, according 
to Bacon,* as monkey kings, or " apes of tyrants ; " 
and their magisterial airs may become so confirm- 
ed, as to still prompt them to fantastic tricks, when 
they first come into view of the great objects, which 
are suited to correct their malady. One such self- 
magnifying knight of the ferule, I saw last year at 
Niagara, having a daguerreotype taken, in which he 
himself figured in the foreground, as more colossal 
than the world-famous cataract, and bestriding it like 
an over-arching rainbow.f 

Teachers need more knowledge, not only to deepen 
their feeling that they know little, but to give more 
permanence to their calling. It is notorious, what a 
transitional and thoroughfare occupation teaching 
has been. So small has been its wages, and so low 
has been its social position, that those who betook 
themselves to it, have had reason to regard it as 
a temporary make-shift, or a ladder to something 

* Works, vol. i., page 167. 

t Perhaps the force of pedantry can go no further than in the case 
of a grammar schoolmaster two centuries ago, who had a portrait 
painted of himself standing before a crucifix, while the following 
words were written on a scroll proceeding out of his mouth : 

"Domine Jesu Christe amas me ?" 

On another speaking scroll which went out of the mouth of him 
who hung on the cross was inscribed the following answer : 

" Clarissime, nobilissime, et doctissime domine Magister Seeger, 
rector scholse Wittenbergensis meritissime atque dignissime, omnino 
amo le ! " — Encyc. Am. Article, Ceremonial. 



INCENTIVES TO MENTAL CULTURE. 29 

higher, which they turned their backs on as soon as 
possible, "scorning Ihc base ck\grees by which they 
did ascend," and hastening from them as boys, 
(before going out by instahnents came into vogue,) 
used to burst forth from a country school at its close. 
Now might not teachers, as a body, be as much supe- 
rior to what they are, as they are superior to those, 
who stood in their places a century ago ? Yet if 
they would but thus magnify their office, they 
woukl extort for it such emolument, and such esti- 
mation, as right early to make it a life-long profession, 
— a homestead and no longer a lodging-place of way- 
faring men, who turn aside to tarry for a night, — 
a profession, which, whoever should leave, would 
look back to as wistfully, as our travellers in Europe 
look homeward. Such a consummation may it be 
yours to see, and then may you live a good while 
after that ! 

The incentives to culture, which I have now pre- 
sented, since it is in our power, fits us for our duties, 
promotes our advancement, is so noble an end, 
forms the basis of a genuine aristocracy, brings 
into the only real communion with the inspirations 
of genius, and more especially is promoted by the 
teacher's school-duties, his alternate leisure and em- 
ployment, and demanded by the present position of 
his calling, as more elevated than ever before, but 
subjecting to new dilficulties, and bidding its children 
to shun its besetting sins, raise the literary character 
of teaching, and establish it as a fourth profes- 
sion ; these incentives must commend themselves 
to every teacher's conscience, reason and self-love. 
These incentives are jewels which, though they 
have been twenty years before some of you, have 
never lost their lustre. They will inflame you, as 
a body, with becoming ardor. Among your pupils, 
your own example will strengthen aU your laws. 
You will be among them, as the golden fruit of the 
orange-tree in social sweetness on the self-same 
3* 



30 MR. butler's lecture. 

bough with blossoms and buds. You will look on 
your every-day task — " the drilled dull lesson," — not 
as a drudgery, but as Johnson styled the vats and 
barrels in Thrale's London brewery, " the potentiality 
of growing rich beyond the dreams of avarice." * 
Your culture will so react upon the children in 
your charge, that however high they may rise, and 
however far they may travel, they will, in all glori- 
ous hours of crowded life, reverence you as authors 
of their true being, — a being, one hour of which is 
worth an age without a name. Among them, there 
may be one like Klopstock, who, at the height of his 
fame, ceased not to strew flowers on his teacher's 
grave; another, who shall pay you such an immor- 
talizing tribute as Daniel Webster f last year paid 
to Master Tappan, " teacher of his infant years ; " and 
another like that prince of London merchants, George 
Peabody, who had no instruction, save in the common 
schools in the town of my residence, and who this very 
year has given us, in aid of educating the many, a 
donation, which would more than found a college 
professorship. :|: If yours be but a primary or infant 



* Boswell, vol. ii. page 288. 

f Works, vol. i. xxi. 

i George Peabody was born in Danvers, Mass., February 17, 1795 ; 
and according to his own words, " in a very humble house in the 
South Parish, and i'rom the common schools of that Parish, such as 
they were in 1803 to 1807, he obtained the limited education his par- 
ents' means could aflbrd ; but to the principles there inculcated in 
childhood and early youth he owes much of his success." His man- 
hood was spent in Baltimore till 1836, when he removed to London, 
where he has ever since resided. A centennial celebration being 
held in his native town, June 16, 1852, Mr. Peabody sent a sealed 
sentiment to be opened and read in the midst of the public dinner. 
The sentiment was, 

" Education— a debt from the present to future generations." 

Then followed this sentence : 

" In acknowledgment of the payment of that debt by the genera- . 
tion which preceded me in my native town, and to aid in its prompt 
future discharge, I give to the inhabitants of that town the sum of 
TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS for the promotiou of knowledge and 



INCENTIVES TO MENTAL CULTURE. 31 

school, you will remember that an error there, must be 
most baneful, cursinjr as it were lik(^ original sin; you 
will emulate Wesley's mother, who taught him his 
alphabet for the twentieth time, that she might not 
prove to have taught it nineteen times in vain ; you 
will not despise sueh an epitaph, as that graven on the 
head-stone of one,* who was thirty-three years an 
elementary teacher in my neighborhood, namely, " I 
taught little children to read." You that have out- 
travelled the remotest of Homer's heroes, Ulysses, to 
reach this classic city, will carry home from it richer 
spoils than the palace of Priam could yield. You 
that, like the Grecian Helen on the walls of Ilium, 
have gazed on the keen encounter of edvicational 
wits, — in this our palaestra, as it were the conflict of 
Paris and Menelaus, — will, like her, return to the 
land of your nativity wiser, and, even, in the after- 
noon of your best days, still bewitching old men and 
young ; or, what is better, instructing them. Com- 
ing up to convocations such as this Institute, you 
shall more and more resemble pilgrims up different 
sides of the same mountain, Avho draw nearer not 
only to each other, but to the sun-girt temple upon its 
summit, and the far-reaching prospects it commands. 
Nay, if all your reunions shall add such a precious 
seeing to your eyes, as some of the lectures and dis- 
cussions hei-e seem able to minister, you will give 
more credibility than it has ever had, to the Popish 

morality among them," &c. &:c. The sequel of the letter showed the 
donor's purpose to be, that his bounty should be expended in rearing 
a convenient building, storing it with a library, and making it vocal 
with popular lectures. While so few millionaires know the true 
uses of wealth, who can survey without admiration this insatiable 
benevolence which, in the language of Burke, " not contented with 
reigning in the dispensation of happiness during the contracted term 
of human life, strains with all the reachings and graspings of a 
vivacious mind, to extend the dominion of its bounty beyond the 
limits of nature, and to perpetuate itself through generations of 
generations, as the guardian, the protector and the nourisher of 
mankind ? " 

* Benjamin Gill, of Danvers, Mass. 



32 MR. butler's lecture. 

dogma, that an assemblage oi fallible bishops no 
sooner meets in oecumenical conclave, than, presto, 
it is forthwith transfigured into an infallible council. 
History, which has been said to have no margin for 
the school-mistress, shall tell of you to latest times, 
as those, the scenes of whose humble toils, illustrious 
foreigners resort to, when they would find where our 
great strength lieth; as reaching many, whom the 
clergy cannot reach, as securing the enlightened exer- 
cise of republican franchises, as our cheap bvit impreg- 
nable defence against English poor rates, as making 
us to differ from the Sardinians, who are forced to 
fill buildings, which you would mistake for school- 
houses lurking by lonely ways, with gend'armes for 
guarding their roads, as turning to healing waters the 
dead sea of immigrations, whose proud waves nought 
could stay ; and as much more excellent than all the 
ministers of justice, by so much, as prevention is 
better than cure, or as a light-house, which preserves 
from shipwreck, is more to be desired than a life-boat, 
which rescues a remnant of the crew. 

Such is the prospective march of the educational 
host. It rises before me like the army of Napoleon, 
when its van had gained the crest of the Alpine St. 
Bernard, and the queen of Italian valleys burst upon 
their ravished gaze. 

But who shall be a lingering laggard? What 
Achan is there in the camp ? Who shall have no 
right, portion, or memorial in coming conquests ? 
Who of you ^vill give ear to ignoble ease and peace- 
ful sloth ? Who shall be seen to desert his ranks, or 
who shall slink away unperceived ? While all others 
bring their offering of culture, who can bear to be 
found empty-handed ? 

He that shall thus throw down the rod of oppor- 
tunity and incentive that is put into his hand, shall 
see it becoming a serpent from whose fangs he will 
vainly flee. If ours were a prophet's eye to detect 
that one recreant in this throng, well might we weep 



INCENTIVES TO MENTAL CULTURE. 



33 



over him, as the austere prophet wept over Hazael, 
prince of Syria. Nay, rather let us thank God that 
we are not tormented before the time of recognising 
him, who shall throw away the key of knowledge. 
Let us each make it as sure as we can, that there will 
be no such traitor to his trust, by daily asking, " Is it 
J?" — assured that each of us is a keeper of but 07ie 
single man, that we can each make sure of him, and, 
that if we each make sure of him, all will be well. 

" Let each 
His adamantine coat gird well, and each 
Fit well his helm, gripe fast his orbed shield 
Borne even or high." 



EKE ATA. 

Page 5, line 15, for Vives, read Vires. 
" 5, line 19, for deportment^ read development. 
" 7, line 37, the passage beginning with "This idea," &c. and ending with the 

1-ith line on the next page, should have been printed as a note. 
" 10, line 34, for semblance, read semblances. 
" 11, line 11, for Patrican, read Patrician. 
" 16, line 10, the sentence beginning with " Children," should have been printed 

as a note. 
" 18, line 27, for whenever, read in which. 
" 19, line 25, after tendency, dele as. 
" 19, line 26, dele are. 
" 19, line 27, for manfest, read manifest. 
" 24, line 9, for unquem, read unguem. 
" 27, line 11, for sparkling springs read a sparkling spring. 
" 28, line 25, for has, read have. 

Note. — Through an unfortunate misunderstanding, the sheets of this Lecture were 
:ill struck off before they had been seen either by tlie Censors or the Author. The 
wliole, however, has been thoroughly corrected for the Institute's annual volume, just 
published. 



AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF INSTRUCTION. 

LECTURES (Nkw Series), JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS, 

AND LIST ()F OFFICERS, 

Published under the Direction of the Board of Censors, 

NOW C O Jl r U I S I N G 13 VOLS. 1 2 Jl o . 

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CONTAINING LECTURES ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS, BY 

Joshua Bates, D.D., late Pres. of Middlebury College ; T. Cush- 
itig, Jr. ; T. Greene ; Rev. A. B. Muzzey ; G. F, Thayer ; Usher 
Parsons, M. D. ; Jacob Abbott; Horace Mann; W. B. Fovvle ; 
Theodore Parker ; E. W. Robinson ; J. S. Dvvight ; A. Fleming; 
Edward A. Lawrence; George B. Eineison ; Samuel G. Howe ; 
E. C. Wines ; W. H. Wood ; Heman Humphrey, D. D. ; Solo- 
mon Adams ; Prof. J. H. Agnew ; Roger S. Howard ; David P. 
Page ; C. Peirce; Alfred Greenleaf ; R. B. Hubbard; Rev. S. J. 
May; Rev. Calvin E. Stowe ; William Russell; Charles North- 
end ; Daniel P. Galloup ; Rev. Charles Brooks ; A. H. Weld ; 
Joseph Hale ; Samuel S. Greene ; Rev. J. N. Bellows ; Joel 
Hawes, D. D. ; Prof. E. D. Sanborn ; Dennison Olmstead, LL. D,; 
Edward Jarvis, M. D. ; Rev. F. A. Adams; Salem Towne ; A. 
N. Johnson ; Geo. S. Hillard ; Rev. Jason Whitman ; Rev. H. B. 
Hooker; Rufus Putnam ; Luther B. Lincoln ; Ariel Parish ; S. P. 
Andrews ; D. Huntington ; Rev. H. Winslow ; T. P. Rodman ; 
John Kingsbury ; Jacob Batchelder ; Rev. Nathan Munroe ; J. D. 
Philbrick ; William D. Swan ; John H. Hopkins, D. D. ; Benj. 
Labaree, D. D. ; T. H. Palmer ; William O. Ayres ; W. C. 
Goldthwait ; C. C. Chase ; Amasa Walker ; Solomon Jenner ; 
Edward Wyman ; Henry K. Oliver ; D. B. Hagar ; Samuel 
W. Bates ; Levi W. Leonard ; W. D. Northend ; Rev. H. D. 
Ranney; W. H. Wells; J. D. Butler; Joshua Bates, Jr. ; Chas. 
H. Wheeler; William J. Whitaker ; Joseph McKeen. 



